


Ninshuu

by Cpgm



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Mentor!Kurama, Pacifist!Kurama, greenhorn author, kid!naruto - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-09-12 02:38:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16864618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cpgm/pseuds/Cpgm
Summary: Kurama is a pacifist, really! Everybody just seems to misunderstand him, what with his teeth larger than buildings, menacing red slit eyes, and his terrible control of his chakra which results in him leaking "killer intent" unintentionally all the time. But no matter, Kurama will prove the world that he is not an evil beast by guiding young Naruto, waylaid and left to die in a forest, on the ways of Ninshuu.





	1. Moving House is Such a Hassle

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing anything at all, so I'm probably going to make many mistakes. Please give me some advice in the comments section on how I can improve and write better stuff for everybody.
> 
> (Also if anyone wants to take any of my ideas or plots to make a better written, more coherent story, please do, you don't even have to ask/tell me)

Kurama was not having a pleasant day.

He was woken up in the morning by Kushina, his host, who had had some rather... interesting pregnancy food cravings. The disaster that was ramen in tomato puree topped with Rocky Mountain Oysters flooded his seal chamber with a stink so revolting it could only have happened if some offence to the fundamental nature of the universe was being digested by Kushina’s stomach. Kurama resorted to repeatedly blowing air out of his mouth, trying to blow the stink away from his sensitive nose.

Two hours later, when the stink had finally started to ebb, his prison started violently shaking, as though an earthquake was happening. Contractions during delivery for a pregnant jinchuuriki makes their mindscape seem like its being assaulted by relentless bombings, which was something Kurama was unfortunately familiar with, having been there during Mito’s deliveries. (People usually think that one’s seal weakens drastically during childbirth, but in truth, it’s mostly because the bijuu reaaaaaaally don’t want to be in there at that time) Covering his eyes with his front paws, Kurama started lamenting about his horrible horrible fate.

9 hours later, the shaking suddenly stopped. Kurama slowly lifted a paw and peeked at the ruined desolation of a mindscape in front of his cage, and was on high alert for any aftershocks. When none came, he let out a huge sigh of relief and slumped on the ground-

Only to feel like he was being instantly squeezed into a tube the size of a drinking straw and forcefully extracted from his ~~hidey-hole~~ prison. With so much pent up frustration within him, it was pretty easy for Tobi to put Kurama under a genjutsu to throw a tantrum on the outskirts of Konoha.

Yes, Kurama was not having a pleasant day.

When the Shinigami ripped his Yin half from his Yang half, Kurama suddenly felt a great deal of pain, along with a great deal of mental clarity of what had just happened. He felt a great lump of world-weariness (and pain!) weigh down on his heart at the knowledge of being used as a weapon of mass destruction yet again, and quietly submitted himself to being sealed in an infant boy. Before Kurama blacked out from the force of the heavily suppressing sealing, his last thoughts were:

“At least it’s a boy this time. Boys can’t get pregnant.”


	2. The Life and Times of a Baby Kit, Part I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, this isn't actually the big start I was intending when I first wrote the prologue, so I'll end up having to change the title of the previous chapter ><, but I think I'm more comfortable writing like this than to just jump-start to when Naruto is 6 and starts his grand journey with Kurama. Also, there's violence and gore(?) in this chapter. It's mostly downplayed because my focus was on what writing Ninshuu feels like, and hopefully I got that part right, but yeah, there's a serious wound in this chapter.
> 
> Also, I haven't actually re-read through this chapter (I've got a fever, 'kay, I need my rest), so if there are any errors, I'll probably edit it afterwards. As usual, anything you think should be changed, or your fine irksome to read, please do write it in the comments section. Thanks to all readers for helping me with this pet project!

Kurama first woke up around 9 months after the traumatic sealing to the feeling of some insect prodding his nose. As he drowsily opened his eyes, he was greeted by a row of stylised metal poles in a damp dark stale sewer. His first reaction was to contemplate what kind of bizarre artwork this was, until he felt the chakra running through the floor and said metal poles of what was now his prison, giving him a bad sense of claustrophobia.

“Na! Na! Na! Na!” sounded inside the prison.

You see, Kurama’s past experiences with being sealed always involved uncomfortable sleeping positions and complete isolation from the outside world, with the exception of when his host was under duress. As such, Kurama was extremely perturbed by the unexpected gargles and sounds being produced, and scanned the cage with his sharp eyes, but he couldn’t find the source of the noise.

“Na! Na! Na! Na! Na!” giggled the voice.

“Could it be that Minato-chibi’s seal connected my cage to my host’s thoughts?” wondered Kurama. “Not that I mind of course, that sounds positively intriguing, but why would he do that? How did he know I’ve always wanted to know what those tiny black flashing box thingies were about?”

“Num! Num!” pouted the voice, with what seemed to be an inpatient lilt.

Kurama suddenly felt as if there was a fly or a beetle pounding on his nose. Perplexed on why a beetle would be in his cage, why it would pound his nose, and how it got so big for him to feel it, Kurama proceeded to cross his eyes and squint on the tip of his nose, et voila! Mystery solved. The happy baby sounds were coming from a baby human, Kushina’s new-born from the feel of its life energy, happily giggling and sitting on the tip of his snout, staring straight into his eyes.

Ah. Kurama understood now. Chibi-chan must be his new host, and must have been interested in Kurama himself and wanted to say hi. That was honestly quite touching, even though Kurama hadn’t the faintest idea of how to handle childre-

His 9-month-old host was in his cage. He only gets to interact with his hosts when they are under duress. HIS 9-MONTH-OLD CHARGE WAS UNDER DURESS??

Panic cleared any remaining grogginess Kurama had from just having woken up, and he proceeded to flood his charge with as much chakra as his host could handle and the seal would allow, allowing Kurama to extend his chakra sensing to the outside world, as well as allowing Kurama to react to any outside threat.

And not too soon it seems, as there was a kitchen knife (KITCHEN KNIFE!) stuck in chibi-chan’s stomach for kami knows what reason. There was also a scuffle happening nearby, but it seems to be drifting further and further away, so it wasn’t an immediate concern. Extending his cloud of chakra to the knife, Kurama flooded the knife with life energy, his chakra dancing and swirling the intrinsic natural spiritual energy within the knife, coaxing it to slip out from chibi-chan’s stomach, and the knife complied.

Step 1, complete.

Next, Kurama focused on chibi-chan’s stomach wound. Kurama wasn’t an omnipotent doctor or surgeon, so if you asked, Kurama wouldn’t be able to tell you exactly what was wrong where and how it should be fixed, but Kurama did know that every living thing’s Yang chakra does know what goes where and whatever was needed to fix wounds, so Kurama just caressed chibi-chan’s Yang chakra, coaxing it to speed up cell regeneration and maintain critical body functions. Of course, given a wound of this magnitude, Kurama would have to chip in some chakra too, so where his own chakra met chibi-chan’s, Kurama let go of its consistency and pushed it towards chibi-chan’s Yang chakra, watching as it morphed and melded into chibi-chan’s own chakra pool. Soon, chibi-chan started regenerating more blood than he lost, and his wounds started stitching itself and healing over with nary a scar in the matter of minutes. There was thankfully no threat of cell death during the regeneration process, since all of chibi-chan’s body was being sustained by sheer will of Yang chakra.

Step 2, complete.

And with chibi-chan regaining his lost health, Kurama felt the seal drawing on his own strength to push him back into his cage. Relinquishing his chakra presence from the rest of chibi-chan’s body, Kurama’s focus returned to his cage, just in time to catch the image of chibi-chan snuggling his nose, seconds before chibi-chan’s mental avatar faded into thin air.

Staring at the empty space in the sewer, Kurama was left alone to mull on what had just happened. Sleep was hard to come for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, how would a wizened Kurama, who has seen many such things before, think about the incident? I think I'll mostly just write more about Kurama's POV next chap, with a bit of plot progression, and only fully go into adventure when I've set a bit of ground rules on how Ninshuu functions, what Kurama's personality is like, and what this Naruto is like (I'm thinking of a bit of divergence from canon to make things flow more easily, but I'll try to stick with what Naruto is like in most fics)


	3. A Birthday to Remember

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, sorry about this being late, I'm seriously in over my head, and I had to delete and rewrite the plot a couple of times, and I'm still not too sure where this fic is headed. Hopefully it turns out ok?
> 
> (who am I kidding this is a disaster, I only hope it's a good disaster)

Kurama had never had a baby jinchuuriki before. He was first sealed into Mito Uzumaki when she was a confident and powerful adult, then transferred to Kushina Uzumaki when she was an obnoxious and boisterous but relatively competent child. Kurama had no experience with dependent, defenceless hosts, and given that he was the first bijuu to have a jinchuuriki host, Kurama didn’t have much prior experience to go by.

But surely humans aren’t supposed to be exposing their jinchuuriki hosts to assassination attempts **this** frequently, right? By the age of 4, baby Naruto (why Minato-chibi named chibi-chan after ramen toppings Kurama will never understand) had met Kurama a total of 7 times, every time due to some kind of major physical or chakric wound to the stomach area. Whenever Kurama’s chakra would surface to heal whatever was hurt, he would sense some kind of battle nearby, always between a group of shinobi with sick, stagnant chakra, and another group with crackling, explosive chakra. Kurama was always alerted too late into the scene, and could never find out which group was the one responsible for attacking chibi.

On the bright side, however, the last 4 times that Naruto had entered his cage, he was finally old enough to talk full sentences. There wasn’t ever any time to talk much, though, because Kurama was busy healing Naruto’s injuries and by the time Kurama was done, Naruto would have mostly faded from his cage. In the brief seconds they had, they managed to trade names, and the last two times Naruto had called him “Ojii-chan”, which was rather endearing (followed by “I have an owie in my tummy”, which was not so cute).

Kurama was starting to think that some party was trying to alter the seal from the outside, or to coax Kurama’s chakra out more often, but what eluded Kurama was the why.

Unfortunately, attacks on Naruto weren’t the only things Kurama had to fret about. Recently, Naruto’s life force had started on a gradual decline, mostly because his food intake had started to drop. There was a sudden spike in the number of times Kurama felt something rotten and toxic in his digestive system as well, but Kurama always coaxed some chakra into Naruto’s stomach and dissolved whatever was potentially harmful into base nutrients, which helped to mitigate the lack of food supply. It always felt like Kurama was trying to squeeze a strand of his fox hair down a teeny-tiny straw into Naruto’s chakra system, but Kurama felt that keeping Naruto from dying of starvation was more than worth the effort; it also helped him practice his horrid chakra control too (although most of the chakra transfer was limited and dictated by the seal rather than Kurama).

It was in such a heavy atmosphere that Kurama passed two more years in his cage (not that Kurama would know, there was no indication of the passage of time inside the seal).

* * *

 

“Ojii-chan! Ojii-chan! Hiiii! It’s me, Naruto!”

Blinking his eyes open, Kurama squinted to find Naruto sitting on the horizontal metal bar just above the floor that was part of his cage doors, swinging his little legs and waving his little hands. Instantly, Kurama went on high alert and was preparing to channel his chakra into Naruto.

“Where are you hurt, little kit?” rumbled Kurama.

“Oh! Don’t worry, I’m not hurt this time! I just came to see you! Ne, ne, Ojii-chan, can I sit on your nose? This thingy is cold.” said Naruto, twitching his nose as he pouted at the metal bar he was sitting on.

Naruto wasn’t hurt? Kurama was confused. Kurama had only met his hosts when they were significantly hurt, so Naruto coming here unhurt was a new experience. Kurama went and felt Naruto’s chakra just to make sure, but he needn’t have worried; it was strong and happy, without any notable injuries. Huh.

“Grab onto my tail, chibi-chan. Say, how did you get here, all by yourself?” said Kurama, lifting one of his tails to curl around Naruto and lift him to the top of his nose.

“I missed you,” said Naruto, hugging the tail tightly. “It’s my 6th birthday today, whenever someone else has a birthday everyone sings for them, and clap for them, and hug them, and and and… I just wanna have someone on my birthday. Everyone’s been mean to me today, when I was hungry and wanted to buy an orange, the orange man got angry at me and he grabbed the orange I wanted and threw it on my face and there was an owie. So I ran back home and I was thinking that whenever I have a big big owie I see you and you’re always so warm and fluffy and you always do somethingy to make all the owie go away and I really really wanted to see you, so I closed my eyes and thinked about you really really hard, but it didn’t work at first, then I thought about that warm feeling in my tummy whenever you make it all better again and I thought really really hard about it. And then I’m here, and I’m really really really happy!” Naruto let go of the tail, only to switch to hugging the snout he was now sitting on top of. “I wanna be here for today, pleeeeeease, it’s my birthday! Can I? Can I? We can play tic-tac-toe, or hide-and-seek, or ninja, or-”

“You can stay, Naruto. You’re welcome to stay here whenever you want.” Kurama wasn’t sure how to properly console a child, but letting Naruto spend time with him whenever he wants should help, right? Also, Kurama could use the company sometimes too. “Tell you what, kid, I’m a little too big to play those human games with you, but I can tell you a story. Do you want to hear a story?”

“Uhuh, uhuh.” Naruto nodded his head vigourously.

“Alright, let’s see… A long time ago, in a land far far away, there used to be a giant tree. The tree was huge, taller than mountains, and its leaves drank dew from the clouds.”

“Uwaaaaaaaaaah, no way! That’s huuuuge!”

“It truly was big. Now hush and listen closely. Although the tree was big, it had very tiny fruit for such a big tree. The fruit looked like a peach, and it was about as big as your head Naruto. But though small, this fruit was powerful. You see, this fruit, was magical…”

* * *

 

“…And when the two brother clasped their hands together, thunder roared and lightning struck, and-”

The mindscape Kurama had been entertaining Naruto in suddenly shook violently, then stopped, the ambient lighting constantly fluctuating erratically between too bright and too dark, shocking both Kurama and Naruto.

“Woah, they must have been super super super powerful! That felt really scary to me!” gushed Naruto.

“Errrr Naruto?”

“Yeah?”

“That shaking just now and the weird lights right now?”

“Yeah? And Ojii-chan can you stop the lights a little? My eyes are a bit tired.”

“Kit? Those things ain’t me.”

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is pretty much just a taster for how I write stuff. To be honest, I don't have much plot planned beyond the set-up, so the next update will have to be quite some time later (for better or for worse). Please tell me if there's any glaring mistakes I need to work on, and by the next update I hope to fix them all.


End file.
